Moderated by Angelina Mehta, general manager of joint ventures at Rio Tinto Aluminium, panellists discussed the road to decarbonisation and how mining companies can look within their organisation and beyond to reach global climate targets.

Panellists discussed the correlation between building trust and implementing the innovation and technology needed to decarbonise.

"First of all, if you were talking about decarbonisation, we're [also] talking about trust," said Louise Grondin, a board member of Champion Iron. "A mining company will say, ‘Okay, we have this target', and if it comes from the top, and yet nobody believes in it won't go anywhere."

Grondin pointed out that a company's employees and staff are as critical a resource as the ones in the ground.

"You need to harvest the ideas and the creativity of your employees in order to achieve what you want to do," she said. "They have to believe in it; they have to know that it's possible."

Outside of the organisation, industry collaboration is also pivotal and an area the mining sector is excelling in, according to the panel.

"From my experience, the mining industry is more collaborative than competitive because we want everybody to improve because we will all be judged by the weakest link," said Grondin.

Fostering an industry-wide mindset of camaraderie was underscored by Carl Weatherall, executive director and chief executive at CMIC.

"It's all about co-opetition [collaboration + competition], how do you collab and compete at the same time," said Weatherall.

Problem based solutions

Louis-Oliver Roy, director of business development at Optel Group, cautioned of being too technologically focused.

"Technology alone won't do it [decarbonisation]," said Roy. "There's been a lot of hype about all sorts of solutions; we have to go from the problem to the technology and not the other way around."

Allowing room for failure was also highlighted in the discussion, as some of the solutions developed for decarbonisation will be born from previous mistakes.

"You need to have that culture of I can fail," said Grondin. "You know that failure is a good learning mechanism."

Ultimately the panel agreed that the path to decarbonisation hinges on the people within a company.

"Innovation or transformation, all that stuff has nothing to do with technology. It's all about people," said Weatherall.